Author Topic: Big Game Hunters (Read 4165 times)

Seal0486 · « **on:** August 12, 2007, 01:35:32 PM »

Why not make a map off the starcraft map Big game Hunters ?

Mcshay · « **Reply #1 on:** August 12, 2007, 02:51:27 PM »

Why?

What is the map and why is it special?

Leviathan · « **Reply #2 on:** August 12, 2007, 02:57:02 PM »

Yes why not?

Get started.

Quantum · « **Reply #3 on:** August 13, 2007, 10:47:20 PM »

still confused :huh:

CK9 · « **Reply #4 on:** August 14, 2007, 01:34:07 PM »

I have one reason why not that has been used against the adding of content:

This is Outpost, not starcraft =P

*runs*

Leviathan · « **Reply #5 on:** August 14, 2007, 05:09:45 PM »

More content the better thats all I have to say. And other games have good map designs, you dont allways have to come up with a new idea to make a good map. There are a lot of Starcraft maps that are fair so they would make good maps to copy from and make Outpost 2 maps of them.

BlackBox · « **Reply #6 on:** August 14, 2007, 05:30:49 PM »

One thing I can say about this map:

Doesn't it have a bunch of animals? (Neutral animal objects in Starcraft). There isn't any parallel to this in the Outpost world.

Furthermore porting an isometric map to an orthogonal system might cause lots of weird problems (the map is going to be rotated 60 degrees and this might cause it to not be fair). You'd have to do a lot of manual work to make the player areas the right size (and possibly put them in the right areas).

Hooman · « **Reply #7 on:** August 14, 2007, 08:16:29 PM »

The map editor is isometric in design, but is the game? I suspect it's not. For one, it'd be easier and more efficient to keep it orthogonal. Plus, the actual unit movement and the actual graphics placed in the map editor all appear to really be orthogonal. Maybe they did it as some sort of weird alignment trick/hack.

And who cares about the animals?

Just dump them. I'm sure people are more interested in the map layout than random animals on it that don't do anything. ... unless of course someone was talking about the actual game "Big Game Hunters" instead of a Starcraft level. Then the animals would be a bit more important.

Leviathan · « **Reply #8 on:** August 15, 2007, 02:17:19 AM »

Ive allready ported two Starcraft maps to OP2.

White Claw · « **Reply #9 on:** September 05, 2007, 07:07:19 PM »

I believe Starcraft maps view as isometric but the underlying terrain is orthogonal. As Hooman said, you can confirm this by watching how things move on screen. Also, you can confirm this in the way it "stacks" buildings.

The square tiles are made to look isometric by running the terrain barriers at 45deg angles instead of 90deg (to the screen). In other words, it just looks isometric.

I plan on running my OP1 remake isometric. Though mine will be an actual isometric rotation of an orthogonal map like the original OP1. I thought about an isometric projection, but since I'm not planning any terrain boundaries it doesn't really matter. Without borders, isometric rotation is easier than isometric projection (though it will be slower). I may have to reconsider my decision. (Which will be unlikely since I'm going to use OP1 graphics.)

Hooman · « **Reply #10 on:** September 06, 2007, 01:28:08 PM »

I would hope you're not rotating tiles at runtime. Just store them in a special format where each scanline increases in width down to the middle of the tile or so, and then decreases. You really don't think you want to be rotating things at runtime. Not just because of speed, but because the actual rotation may produce undesirable side effects. If they are prerotated, then you can attempt to correct any oddities from rotation/scaling.

White Claw · « **Reply #11 on:** September 06, 2007, 04:04:48 PM »

Nope. I'm not planning on pre-rotating or rotating during runtime. As of now, I'm planning on using the original OP1 graphics. If you've ever looked at them, they are actually square tiles with transparent corners. So the orthogonal looking tile is actually square but it get's blt-ed with no corners. So when I say it's an isometric rotation, that's just in reference to how main terrain is displaying the map (which will be stored isometric). But the map and the tile set are disconnected. (I'm not sure if any of that makes sense.)

If I was able to build the draw routines in Windows myself, I would do as you (Hooman) suggested. Increasing the width of each scanline for a given tile while blasting it into the double buffer. But since I haven't been able to figure out Windows and how to write directly to a BMP, I have to settle for doing transparent blt. Maybe after getting this to work, I'll understand Windows enough to speed things up.

I'll probably do testing with transparent and non-transparent BMPs an find out how much of a performance hit it is anyway.

Wow, we're way off topic again...

Hooman · « **Reply #12 on:** September 06, 2007, 04:24:16 PM »

It makes perfect sense. And actually, that suggestion I made might not always be very appropriate. If the images are loaded into video memory, they can potentially be blited faster using the hardware, and that likely only supports rectangles. Plus existing APIs such as the Windows API likely only supports rectangles. But, it all depends on whether your doing software or hardware biltting, and whether or not you want to make use of existing APIs. What I suggested might be faster for a software approach where you're not using an existing API, since it'll need to touch noticably less memory. It also saves on memory.

So, now that we have that out of the way, Big Game Hunters. Yeah, I suppose Starcraft maps could potentially be imported into OP2 format then. You'd have to figure out some kind of cell type translation/default though, and figure out what to do about tubes, bulldozed tiles, scorch marks, walls, etc. Certainly some graphics editing is involved.

White Claw · « **Reply #13 on:** September 06, 2007, 07:05:23 PM »

(Secondary Note: I would like to stay away from hardware specific coding so that anyone could play it. Plus I don't have the resources available to do widespread testing of hardware dependent stuff.

In reality, with all the built in windows-to-hardware interfacing that exists, blt-ing transparent graphics might be really fast already.)

For the Starcraft porting, are we talking about having an "auto" porting utility? Or someone just wanting a "Big Game Hunter"-like map. (For those who haven't played it, I believe it is a map with tons of resources available right at your starting base. Entrance points of ground attack are very funneled and air attack is a must, which is obviously not as much of an option for OP2.)

Oh yeah, and are we talking about Starcraft-ish style terrain graphics? Or just porting the map over to OP2's existing structure?

Anywho...

Hooman · « **Reply #14 on:** September 06, 2007, 08:35:29 PM »

I was actually implying something like DirectX, where you just call a BitBlt function, and it uses hardware if it's available, and if not falls backs on software. Most cards have some sort of 2D bit blit functionality, and from what I hear, it's been that way since DOS was around. In other words, it's pretty much guaranteed to be present, and if it's not, the API takes care of it for you anyways. No big need to test or worry about it not running on a particular computer.

If the tile set and map formats for Starcraft are known, I can probably port some maps over. I already (largely) ported the Dune 2000 tile set and 26 of the maps. The maps weren't quite perfectly ported, as I don't think I set cell types when I did it, but the graphics seem to have come over flawlessly.

White Claw · « **Reply #15 on:** September 06, 2007, 08:57:08 PM »

I've tried to deal with DirectX but most of the info I've found is extremely heavy with 3D. There often seems to be a complete lack of 2D information. I'm guessing that's because most of the 2D stuff has become native in basic Win application programming.

I haven't checked out any of the Dune maps. Are those up on the forum? (Sorry, I haven't bothered to look.

)

Hooman · « **Reply #16 on:** September 06, 2007, 09:43:19 PM »

Maybe. I don't remember if I ever posted them. As for DirectX, that's because they dropped DirectDraw in the later versions. I'm not too sure why, or what exctly that entails. Either they're justnot updating the 2D code anymore, and just keeping the old stuff around, or maybe it's not even shiped with newer versions and newer computers might not have it. I think one of the reasons why, is that most games, which DirectX seems primarily designed for, are now 3D. That, and I think it's easier for the hardware manufacturers to be compliant if the specs are a little smaller. The "newer" way seems to be to setup a fixed camera, and I guess point it at a big rectangle you do all the drawing on, and let the hardware deal with it. Sounds a little convoluted to me. I think a lot of people were confused when they dropped DirectDraw.

Sirbomber · « **Reply #17 on:** September 07, 2007, 11:24:39 AM »

Quote

Maybe. I don't remember if I ever posted them.

No, you didn't. I remember you told me about them on IRC not too long ago and I tried to get you to find them and post them on the forums (though it seems you've forgotten).

White Claw · « **Reply #18 on:** September 07, 2007, 06:40:04 PM »

I'd like to learn DirectX, but right now I'm struggling just to figure out exactly how I want to do data management with windows. I don't really want to have everything global, but I also don't want to have to pass data structures to all of the children windows. I think I just need to play with it for a bit.

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Author Topic: Big Game Hunters (Read 4165 times)